


the music in me

by blindmadness



Series: Crossover and AU Adventures [1]
Category: High School Musical (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, background Chad/Ryan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 12:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindmadness/pseuds/blindmadness
Summary: Gabriella's friends do not want her associating with an Ares kid; Troy doesn't even know if that's who he is. (A Percy Jackson AU.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first of the prompt fills I did, and it was such a great note to start on. A Percy Jackson AU of High School Musical-- I was so delighted by how ridiculous and weirdly excellent of a premise this was. Why do the kids of East High work so well at Camp Half Blood? Why doesn't a five-book series expansion of this exist? (Oh, right, because I haven't written it.)
> 
> Please forgive the title, I couldn't resist. (But let's be real, I'm sure Apollo would take enormous pride in these movies.)

“You know you can’t date a guy from the _Ares cabin,_ right?”

Gabriella turns to look at the severe expression on Taylor’s face, and can’t help the urge to giggle. It’s just the way she says it, as if it’s a curse word. Gabriella’s barely been at Camp Half-Blood for a couple weeks; it’s hard for her to take these rivalries seriously. It seems ridiculous. They’re all demigods, after all, all in the same camp, working towards survival and cooperation. Who cares who’s in what cabin?

But she said something similar to Taylor back in her first few days here, after she’d been revealed as a daughter of Athena (no surprised there, honestly), and her new bunkmate’s reaction was nothing short of catastrophic. She railed on about feminism and history and tradition and “those idiot lunkhead jocks” until Gabriella hastily talked her down. She’s gathered since then that everyone in the cabin pretty much agrees, so it’s impossible to talk to any of them about it either.

And that was all before she and Troy had gotten really close, too, so it had been mostly hypothetical. Now it’s very much not, and it’s clear Taylor has a lot more to say about it.

“He’s not from the Ares cabin,” Gabriella says, without actually addressing her friend’s point. Because of course she doesn’t know that. She knows that Taylor doesn’t want her to, and she knows that it would definitely cause a stir among both her and Troy’s cabinmates. But if she decides she wants to date Troy, she’s certainly not going to let a little thing like their divine parents hating one another to their very core stand in her way. All that should matter is how she and Troy feel about each other.

Taylor rolls her eyes. For an Athena kid, Gabriella thinks in amusement, she’s really holding to her assumption without any proof. “He practically is. Everyone knows that’s who his divine parent will be. He’s in their cabin already!”

“They made an exception for him,” Gabriella says patiently, but she’s a little tired of having this conversation. “No one knows where he’ll end up. And no matter what you think of the other Ares kids—Troy’s not like that. He’s different.”

Taylor rolls her eyes; she’s probably as tired of hearing that as Gabriella is of saying it. “Sure,” she says, clearly humoring her. “Okay. Can we just go back to planning Capture the Flag strategy for now so we can crush him, whoever his parent is?”

Gabriella grins. No matter how much she likes Troy, there’s no way she’s going easy on him during their Capture the Flag rematch. “Of course.”

 

“You’ll get your sign,” Chad tells Troy every day, sounding as encouraging as he can. “Any day now. It’s only a matter of time.”

But Troy’s starting to worry. All of his friends in the Ares cabin got their signs within a day or two of coming to camp, like their dad couldn’t wait to claim them as kids. If Ares is his dad—and it seems inevitable, really; who else could it be?—is he ashamed of Troy? Is he so much worse of a prospect than his probably-siblings?

And if Ares isn’t his dad, then who is?

Kids who haven’t been claimed by their divine parents usually stay in the Hermes cabin, but the Ares kids insisted on Troy after he encouraged them to rally during a particularly vicious game of Capture the Flag, bringing them together to work as a team and leading them to victory. “He’s obviously one of us,” Chad had insisted to Chiron, who had reluctantly agreed to bend the rules just this once.

But it’s been a couple weeks now, and Troy still hasn’t gotten a sign. He’s enlisted Gabriella (secretly, of course; Ares kids can’t hang out with Athena kids too openly, and Chad would have a field day if he found out) to help him look up the symbols associated with all of the gods, just to make sure he doesn’t miss one, if it comes to him. He can’t imagine most of these gods could have produced him, but it’s worth checking out—he has to know.

But though he looks and he waits, nothing happens, and Chad’s encouragement is starting to feel more than a little _dis_ couraging, and so after dinner, when Chad claims he has to go taunt the Aphrodite cabin on their imminent Capture the Flag defeat (Troy doesn’t know who Chad thinks he’s fooling; he’s seen the way he looks at Ryan Evans), Troy goes to sit on the hill and think.

Camp Half-Blood is beautiful, and he’s had so much fun here. He loves Capture the Flag, and he loves the friends he’s made, his cabinmates. And he’s so glad he’s met Gabriella, who’s the only person he’s ever met who doesn’t seem to want him to be anyone other than who he is. Everyone else—his parents back home, Chiron and the other counselors, the rest of the Ares cabin, the other campers—looks at him with expectation, either waiting for his godly parent to reveal himself or making assumptions about him just because they think he’s probably an Ares kid.

But there are so many rules, and he hates all the expectation, and he isn’t even allowed to spend time with Gabriella without getting a lecture from Chad and the others about how Ares kids do _not_ date Athena kids under any circumstances. He doesn’t want all of this pressure. He just wants to be himself, and he doesn’t think he can do that until he can find out who he really is.

“Why?” Troy finds himself demanding, looking up at the sky, more out of habit than anything else—he knows Mount Olympus is in New York, and he knows his dad, whoever he is, is probably not watching. But he looks up anyway, and he sighs heavily. “Why haven’t you claimed me? What’s wrong with me? Why won’t you help me figure this thing out?”

And he stares at the sky, at the slowly setting sun, and he watches the sky turn from blue to orange and gold—and then he blinks and starts, because it isn’t the sky that’s turning those colors, it’s just that it seems that way because a symbol in those colors is shimmering right in front of Troy’s eyes.

He can barely breathe. Is this real? Is it happening right now?

He watches as the symbol resolves itself into a glowing, bowed shape—sort of like a horseshoe, but more solid, more ornate. It’s a musical instrument of some kind, he realizes, with strings stretched across its length, glittering in the sky; he thinks he might even be able to hear notes in the distance, like a quiet strumming. It’s unmistakable as a symbol, and Troy is so shocked that for a good minute or two, he doesn’t think about what it could mean.

And then, as his heart rate slows and he finds himself able to breathe again, he realizes: he doesn’t recognize the musical instrument itself, but he knows that that’s what it is. And his mind races forward, remembering which god is associated with music—and poetry, and theater, and all of the things that very much do _not_ embody the god of war.

It means that he’s found his divine parent, and it’s not Ares. It’s Apollo.

Troy’s shoulders slump, and he mutters under his breath, “Oh, _crap.”_


End file.
